cheeks and shoulders

[Richard Shaefer]

I guess everyone has their favorite widget, but I like my L/N rabbet block plane for trimming cheeks. I don't see the end of the tenon in the finished product, so I don't much care about blowing out the end grain. I also machine cut my tenon cheeks before tuning them with hand tools, so I don't have the parallel loss issues people have with hand cut cheeks. I trim my shoulders with a sharp chisel. It's the only way I know of to completely avoid blowing out the end grain, and it also lets me undercut the inside edges for a tighter fit in the visible part of the joint.

shoulder planes are nice, but to be honest, I don't get a lot of use out of them.

[Jim Koepke]

Jim I understand what your doing with the tenoned piece but I don't understand what your doing with a lap joint?
Bob

Nothing explains like a picture:

Leg Lap Joint.jpg

The arrow points to the meeting spot without a shallow socket to hide the edge of the piece that butts up against the underside of this saw bench.

Making a shallow cutout hides any roughness of cut or slight misalignments.

jtk

[Bob Warfield]

Thanks Jim. Now I understand.
Bob

[Sean Hughto]

. If you need a router plane for tenon cheeks, I suspect you need to practice on your sawing skills, whether by hand or machine.
Stan

What is it with some people? There is no need for hobbiest woodworkers to wait until they are able to hit everything perfectly right off the saw before making great fitting joints. Part of the beauty of hand tools is how they give the user the ability to sneak up on perfect fits for each joint (e.g., fitting the reveal on door or a drawer, not to mention dovetails and m&ts). Stan, why do you feel the need to sneer at folks who bring tools to bear after the saw? The results are what count, not what tool you used to remove the waste wood.

[Stanley Covington]

What is it with some people? There is no need for hobbiest woodworkers to wait until they are able to hit everything perfectly right off the saw before making great fitting joints. Part of the beauty of hand tools is how they give the user the ability to sneak up on perfect fits for each joint (e.g., fitting the reveal on door or a drawer, not to mention dovetails and m&ts). Stan, why do you feel the need to sneer at folks who bring tools to bear after the saw? The results are what count, not what tool you used to remove the waste wood.

It is unfortunate that this form of brief written communication is so readily misunderstood. No insult or "snear" to less experienced woodworkers was intended in my remarks.

I have no objections to "folks who bring tools to bear after the saw." Did I not suggest three planes as potential solutions to Jeff's question? Is not each capable of removing precise amounts of material in order to achieve "perfect fits?" But a router plane suggests, at least to me, hogging a lot of wood to true up a twisted tenon. Do I misunderstand? And if the tenon is so far out of plane/parallel that it needs a router to true, then is it not going to take more time to correct than a tenon that required only a few swipes with a skewed-blade block plane to correct?

So please follow my logic, Sean. If a fellow's tenon right of the saw is so far out of tolerance he needs a router plane to true it, and he is spending additional time correcting it (remember that no one sees a tenon after it is glued/pinned so beauty should not be critical), then is it not logical for him to want to improve his skills to the point where he can cut his tenons so they don't require any touch-up after sawing? Is that not the ideal? Would that not give him more time to cut more tenons and build more furniture or more timber frames?

But I guarantee you, that if a man beginning in woodworking believes, based on comments on a forum like this, that skewed, grossly out-of-tolerance tenon cheeks are satisfactory, and that a router plane can make up for his errors with the saw, his skill with the saw will not progress.

I learned woodworking under harsher masters than most of the people on this forum, I suppose, but I am grateful to the old boys that turned a scornful eye at my first pitifully twisted tenons, and then later nodded with satisfaction, but without a word of praise, when I finally succeeded in copying their stance and handhold and arm movement and eyeball enough to consistently saw a tenon using both handsaw and a circular saw precisely enough that it did not require additional time or tools to bring back into tolerance. I would not thank them now if they had seen my lousy work, patted me on the head like a small boy, and simply suggested planes to use to fix my errors. If they had indulged me like a small boy then my skills would have much slower in progressing, I would have been a less profitable workman, and I would have had much less satisfaction in woodworking over the years.

I remember the evening when those old boys invited me to drop by a blacksmith's shop one evening after work. We sat on buckets and crates and cooked little fish on sticks around a fire in the smithy while the geezers drank beer from bottles and sake from little cracked teacups. After everyone had killed a few soldiers, they told scornful stories of how hopeless I was. But after a little more lubrication, one or two admitted that I was coming along just fine. I swelled with pride and resolved to work even harder to emulate those crusty old farts.

You wrote: "The results are what count, not what tool you used to remove the waste wood." I can only agree. And to what you wrote I add that greater satisfaction comes from developing the skills necessary to cut a tenon true the first time with just a saw than from having four of five planes available at hand to remove waste wood that should have been excised by a precise sawblade the first time.

It is fine to suggest ways to correct errors. It is fun to debate the best tool for correcting errors. But let us not suggest that correcting an error is equivalent to doing the work right the first time. Or should this forum be like a modern kindergarten school, where every student's ego is thought to be so fragile that, unless he receives a first place ribbon and a balloon for simply being in class, he will become an emotional cripple?

No offense was intended, Sean. I have two router planes and find them very useful, but have never used one for trimming a tenon. Did I misunderstand how everyone that suggested a router plane uses them?

Stan

[Sean Hughto]

Stan, in the old days I might have gone at this chapter and verse, but frankly I have no appetite for it anymore. Your new post makes quite plain that you consider those who might use a router unskilled and inefficient, based apparently upon your own suppositions having never tried the technique. Okay.

I write for those who like to make stuff. I try to provide practical advice based upon my actual experience with tools and using them in the shop. Any newbies reading along should know that when working by hand, it is not at all uncommon to err on the side of sawing tenons a touch fat - not grossly, just a couple sheets of paper kind of fat - and then shaving the tenon for a perfect fit to the mortise. I recently read an old Ernie Connover article from FWW on M&T basics where Ernie said exactly that. One can use most any blade to make your shavings - chisel, rabbet plane, shoulder plane, etc. When using a chisel, it can be a bit tricky to remove exactly the same about across the cheek (especially on large or wide tenons). A router plane makes it a no brainer to slice off the same amount from everywhere on the cheek, and to then duplicate that effort on the other side as well, to keep things centered.

Here isa thread with pictures I made a long time ago on Knots regarding making a frame and panel door (including M&Ts) that Derek Cohen was kind enough to host on his site. Anyone can see details of my own particular methods and their results there, if they'd like:
http://www.inthewoodshop.com/furnitu...el%20door.html

[Stanley Covington]

Stan, in the old days I might have gone at this chapter and verse, but frankly I have no appetite for it anymore. Your new post makes quite plain that you consider those who might use a router unskilled and inefficient, based apparently upon your own suppositions having never tried the technique. Okay.

You have your own opinion based on your experience. I have mine. But personal insults like "what is it with some people?" and "why do you feel the need to sneer at folks?" contribute nothing.

Since you resisted a diatribe "chapter and verse" and devoted your last post mostly to justification of out-of-tolerance tenons, I suspect you have matured. Applause. Perhaps someday the urge to hurl insults will cease entirely.

Stan

[Sean Hughto]

Stan, I don't know how else to read "If you need a router plane for tenon cheeks, I suspect you need to practice on your sawing skills ..." than as a sneer. And you just perpetuate the sneer with "justification of out-of-tolerance tenons" and the like from your prior post. Luckily my ego can take it, so I guess I'm not a kindergartener.

[Stanley Covington]

Stan, I don't know how else to read "If you need a router plane for tenon cheeks, I suspect you need to practice on your sawing skills ..." than as a sneer. And you just perpetuate the sneer with "justification of out-of-tolerance tenons" and the like from your prior post. Luckily my ego can take it, so I guess I'm not a kindergartener.

Congratulations. Give me an address and I will mail a blue ribbon and a balloon.

Stan

[Mark Dorman]

I wanted a shoulder plane until I read something Frank Klausz said about not using a shoulder plane. "I don't need them. I cut my tenons right the first time." Now am I there yet no; am I trying yes. Until I get there it's pare when necessary and occasionally router plane the cheeks. I guess my two cents worth is the router plane is versatile and gets my vote over a shoulder plane. I use a four in hand file on the cheeks sometimes but nothing feels better or is faster than having one work straight off the saw.

[Jack Curtis]

Whether or not one needs a rebate, router, and/or shoulder plane largely rests on whether one saws to the line or leaves waste. The router plane use seems way too slow, so I've never considered using one on a tenon. I always saw on the line, just to the outside so I have a minimum amount of trimming, which for the tenon cheeks I do with a LN large shoulder plane, nice mass, very nice plane; but most any rebate would handle a pass or two, especially if it's already on the bench.

For the real shoulder, I have a LN small 1/2" shoulder (old version, not currently in their catalog) and HNT Gordon 3/4"; but in fact, I seldom use them, preferring instead a wide chisel for narrow shoulders.

So I understand Stan's point and don't really disagree; but it's hard to be so hard on skills (not) held by others. There are so many ways to get this job done efficiently.

[Dhananjay Nayakankuppam]

Shoulder plane or marking knife and chisel for shoulders. A rabbet block plane works for cheeks as does a router plane. The router plane is probably better in some ways. A rabbet block plane is good when the cheek has been sawed straight but is just a tad too thick - if the cheek is out of square, a rabbet block will make a thinner, but still out of square tenon since it is very difficult to register the plane squarely against the small shoulder (in contrast to using the shoulder plane on the shoulder where it rests on the larger registration surface of a trued cheek). So the approach that makes sense to me is to first get your cheeks right (true and the right thickness) and this is achieved most easily with a router plane (or by clamping the tenon in a handscrew clamp and using the clamp surface as a registration surface for a broad chisel). Then use a shoulder plane to true the shoulder.

However keep in mind that the router plane needs to take very shallow paring cuts. A deeper cut is likely to result in levering out chips which can wreck the cheek. So your sawing should be good - these tools and techniques can help to make minor corrections. In general, I find that aiming for a good fit from the saw (for dovetails and mortise-tenon joints) results in better fit and more conservation of energy/concentration. Any adjustments should be very minor and usually done after a test fit reveals tightness. So, the other really important thing required here is a good feel for the wood that lets you saw while keeping just to this side of safety. I aim to get a joint that goes together from the saw and use these other techniques to ensure that gluing up does not require huge clamping pressure and mallets and hammering and stress. The safety margin on poplar feels very different from that on maple.

Cheers, DJ

[Charlie Stanford]

Like many, I like to tune up my mortise and tenon joints by hand. Sometimes I cut the joints by hand, sometimes I use power tools. Fine tuning cheeks for me has meant using a piece of wood with course sandpaper taped to it......basically I cut the tenons and then sand to fit. For tuning shoulders I usually scribe a line with a knife and then carefully pare with a chisel. It works but I want to use hand planes for these tasks now. The Feb issue of Finewoodworking actually has an article to this effect discussing the various planes for this task.

So here's my list of candidates:
shoulder plane
rabbet block
jack rabbit (this was missing from the FW article)

Let's talk about what works for you and why. I have never owned any of these planes but here's my thoughts: the shoulder plane seems like the logical best choice, rabbet block seems really handy but might not work so well on shoulders, and then there's the jack rabbit........could this be the most versatile, or is it too large for this type of work? Please feel free to comment on any others not on my list as well as the different sizes. One more fyi: I do own and use a stanley #78 but I fine it's adjustments a bit course for the work I'm trying to do here. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Scroll down to about the middle of the page and play the video on tenon cheeks:

http://furnituremakersapprentice.net...l#sharpenplane

[Thomas love]

Thanks for the link Charles.

[Mark Dorman]

+1 on the link Charles. Thanks for sharing that. I was cutting some small tenons the other day and accidentally popped a cheek down to the line. I cut a small notch with my chisel to start my saw in; it helps me stay on the waste side of the line but right up to the line. So I had my shoulder cut done and was making the line side of my notch and the cheek popped of and scared the crap out of me. When I took a good look at it to see if it was okay; it was right down to my knife line all the way around. So when I was sawing the others I kept thinking how fast and clean that was and what if I tried it on purpose. Heck I made curved legs and chair slats that I kerfed and chiseled to quickly remove waste; so why not tenons?
The video reinforces what I was thinking.